Morning Glories for Georgia - Quilt of the Week

 

Morning Glories for Georgia, 24" x 30", made by Pam Geisel

This is one of my favorite quilts. It's actually quite simple in it's construction. There are only 35 pieces to it (compared to Lavender Diamonds which has over 4000 pieces in it). Unlike Lavender Diamonds, this one has fairly simple quilting because I didn't want to take away from the painterly quality of the hand-dyed fabric was the most interesting part.

When I was designing this piece I knew I wanted to do a large-scale image of a flower like Georgia O'Keeffe did, only I couldn't decide what type of flower it should be. I searched for images waiting to be inspired but nothing jumped out. Finally I decided to let the fabric tell me and when I looked at my stash of hand-dyed fabrics, there were good options of dark green and shades of purple, so the fabric told me it wanted to be purple morning glories.

The dark green background was not made from one piece as I didn't have a single piece that large, which is one reason why the edges of the flowers are cropped off, so I could use four different pieces to make the background. The other reason the edges of the flowers are cropped off it because that's what Georgia O'Keeffe did when she made her painting of large-scale flowers.

Hanging out at the Winds with "High Line in New York City" and "Daybreak is Your Midnight."

Because this is the Quilt of the Week, it is 10% off the original price of $560 through 7/11/21 if you purchase directly from me. Details can be found here.

Musings on Flowers, Warm vs. Cool Colors, and Lobby Show Themes

"Morning Glories for Georgia" and "Delightful Daisy" (not to scale)

Today I stopped into Village Artisans, the artist co-op that I belong to in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Today was the day we hung a new lobby show. The theme of the new show is "Spring Forward" so I decided to put in two of my flower pieces. The show will be up through June 3.

"Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom" and "Forget-Me-Nots" (also not to scale)

I removed the two piece I had in the last show and returned them to my spot in the gallery. What I noticed was that these two pieces also had flowers so they would have fit the theme of the new show. The show that they were in was "Warm Colors vs. Cool Colors" and I noticed that the two pieces that are going into the new show would have also been appropriate for the previous show, since "Morning Glories for Georgia" has cool colors, and "Delightful Daisy" has warm colors.

 

Morning Glories for Georgia

"Morning Glories for Georgia," 24 x 30, handmade by Pam Geisel, November 2016

I made this art quilt to honor American artist Georgia O'Keeffe who is best known for her large scale paintings of flowers, New Mexico landscapes, and New York skyscrapers. By the mid-1920s, she began creating large-scale paintings of natural forms at close range, at a time when no one else was doing this. She learned about cropping from her husband Alfred Stiglitz' photography and used it to with her flower paintings because she want to make sure people really saw the flower. She even wrote of her desire to glorify flowers, “I’ll paint it big, and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it. I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.”

The hardest part of making this quilt was deciding what flower to use. I looked at her paintings of flowers. And I looked at photographs of flowers. And I took my own photographs of flowers to look at. I considered Jack-in-the-Pulpits because there is a quilt square that goes by that name, but I didn’t like the colors in them.

It wasn't until I looked through my stash of hand-dyed fabric that I decided to focus on Morning Glories. (when in doubt, let the fabric tell you what it wants to be). Much like Georgia's paintings of morning glories, I included two flowers in my piece, but I did come up with my own composition.

When I drew the outline of the morning glories I did intentionally avoid any sharp edges trying to keep the shapes as organic as possible. And I focused on keeping Georgia’s intention of glorifying the humble flower.

It is machine raw-edged pieced with machine quilting along the raw edges and also in the petals and background. I couched three pieces of hand-spun yarn for the stamens. It has a knife-edge binding.

As always you can click on the photos to see them larger.

More about Morning Glories for Georgia

PS. This is my 400th blog post!